Switzerland: Getting there & Zurich

Getting to Switzerland is a trek. We left around 6:00 pm and got to Zurich just a couple hours shy of 24 hours later. Part of that was time change, but we also didn’t sleep one wink on the plane. It was hard to when we just kept following the sun. The sun only really went down for about an hour and then we caught back up to it. On the upside, Sean managed to drink quite a bit of the free wine Air Berlin was offering on the flight. And they gave us a cute little package of personal items (toothbrush, sleep mask, socks, earplugs, etc). We left LA when it was 100 degrees and arrived in rainy Zurich in our comfy plane clothes and flip flops. By the time we got to our hotel room at about 5:00, we were BEAT. And wet. And cranky. We wanted to just go straight to bed but our good sense told us to go get something to eat and try to wait it out another hour or so. So we found a cute little place to have our first Swiss dinner and enjoyed it more than I thought we were going to considering how tired we were. We got back to our hotel around 8 and passed out. Until 1:00AM, at which point we were wide awake and ready to start our day. We killed a couple hours playing cards and talking and finally couldn’t lay in bed any longer and got up around 4:30 figuring we’d just get an early start at getting to Lucerne. We stumbled into the strangest 24 hour pizza joint that was basically the only thing open and had, no joke, the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had in my LIFE. In a china glass nonetheless. And the best pasta that I am pretty sure had been on the warmer all night long. But it was delicious! Then we headed back to the train station (which is inside the airport in Zurich) and found our saving grace for the rest of the trip, the Tourism Office. They will help you with anything in there. The people were so nice and friendly (in every city we went to). And its free. So we would just go straight to the tourism office, buy our train or bus tickets and ask a million questions and save ourselves a lot of hassle later. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see too much of Zurich and despite what we had read, it really seemed like a cool city. Luckily, we got another night there at the very end of the trip and did a little more sightseeing but if we ever went back, I would definitely give Zurich a day or two to explore.